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Got a healthy chuckle yesterday when a Motortopia friend shared the story about her handle with us.

The more friends we have on Motortopia, the more we find ourselves talking around here with each other in weird names, in Motortopia-speak. We talk about people with their handles which represent cars - 99_corvette, or jobs - amarillo_banker; or hobbies - guitarman.

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I know one of the things we all love about cars, being around others who love cars, and watching folks who love cars, driving, racing and things car related is the unbridled passion, the true and non-manufactured passion, for cars and the car - sports.

No one lived that better than Dale Earnhardt, born today, April 29, 1951; Earnhardt held so many honors: from Rookie of The Year in 1979 to Inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2006.

Each one of us probably has our memory of Dale; some image from some race, or winner's circle, or interview which helps us understand and remember; that it is heart and soul that drives the best in motortoports; and Dale gave us a lot of heart while he was on this earth.

Whether you are passionate about cars, bikes, boats, or airplanes; we all know Earnhardt and what he did for the love of his sport.

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That's how a network engineer expresses glee when the packets of information that make the internet go are flowing, once again, easily from your site to the world.

And that is exactly what we heard from our engineers in various locations who were working to solve our "internet headache" this week.

Wow, what a week!

Early Tuesday morning we started with a major data center upgrade ( to help Motortopia run even better and get ready for some cool new services we will offer you on Motortopia :-) )

And, you know the story--- everything was "supposed" to go just as smooth as cybersilk. UhHuh.

The data center upgrade itself was pretty easy. It took about 4-5 hours to get the systems installed and hooked up. We are now coming to you from our new data center with lots of redundant connections to the internet and some other really cool, starwars looking things.

But, the best data center in the world is not so hot unless you can get your servers to talk with the rest of the world. And to do that, the traffic cops of the internet, routing tables, have to be updated around the globe.

Theoretically (man, I am beginning to hate that word ;-) ) this should only take a few hours. And, for many of our Motortopia friends out there...that it all that it took. But for many others of you, Motortopia just seemed to get lost in Cyberspace.

Just like you track down a short in an electrical system -- it can be maddening sometimes -- we worked with engineers with some of the world's largest internet backbone providers to figure this out. At first, we just kept hearing, well, just wait, just wait, all will be fine. Then we pushed the issue because things were not getting fine. Many of you reported you could still not get to Motortopia on Tuesday night, then Wednesday, then Thursday.

So, we are pulling our hair out.

And, finally, a few smart engineers at ( and we don't necessarily want to give out names but it rhymes with AT &T :-)) tracked down a bug in the way their routing tables were telling the world about where Motortopia was at, fixed the little bug, and now we are back up and running.

Hence, two thumbs up. All is good to go.

Thanks to the guys here at Motortopia who worked day and night since Tuesday to get this all resolved. And thanks to the engineers who finally helped figure this out. To some very large telecommunications companies that rhymes with A T & T, we say.........

and, most important, to all of you, our Motortopia friends, we stay thank you for sticking with us this week. Many of you emailed information and support from around the world. This helped us track down the issues and get things resolved. Your're all the best.

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Maybe you are having a quiet Christmas, maybe you are surrounded by lots of people. Maybe you are at home, or maybe you have traveled far away to be with family and friends who are distant most of the year.

Wherever you are, all of us at Motortopia wish you a very Merry Christmas!!!!